A Chokwe Figural Basket

An extremely rare and beautiful basket depicting human figures, which is incredibly rare in African baskets with its sublime form and superb construction. Furthermore the upper figures on the basket are depicted wearing a costume associated Chokwe male initiation.

An intriguing aspect of the iconography on the basket is that while the upper figures are shown with costume the lower figures are not. It seems a reasonable conjecture that the basket depicts young boys before and after initiation